Theory without practice is sterile

"Practice without Theory is blind, Theory without practice is sterile"
-- Karl Marx

I think the quote describes most of the Christians today. There are mainly 2 types.

Practice without Theory:
There are the Christian's that are always doing for God. They follow all the rules that someone has set. It might be their church, their favorite Christian author or TBN TV program host. They have crosses, pictures of Jesus, and angel figurines everywhere. They usually sound good when they talk. Things they do are usually good but they really have no idea why they do the things they do. They know that Jesus is the one to follow but if someone asked them how they know Jesus is the one the best they can come up with is that "Jesus changed my life" or "the bible says so".
I have heard this described a "Foke Theology". They follow their beliefs but their beliefs have no firm base. The eliefs could be correct or not. The thing is that they can not tell you why they do or believe it. "That's just the why I was taught" or "that is the way my parents taught me."

I use to work for a company that sold medical software. I was in charge of converting the old system's data to our new system. In the process of learning how the old system worked so that I could better convert the data to our new system, I would sit down with the people and have them show me how they did things on the old system. I was always asking people why they did things the way they did. Most of the time the answer was 'this is how the person before me did it'. They knew the right thing to do but somewhere along the way the 'reason' was lost. This has happened in the life of many Christian’s.

Theory without practice:
Then there are the ones that know all there is to know about God, Jesus, and the Bible. They quote scripture, have all the answers in Bible study, if you have a problem they can quote 10 scriptures that explains what you need to do. They tell you how they can not get through one day without God but their life, attitude, and actions speak the opposite. They usually are the complainers, the ones who do not tithe, their spouse can not stand them and their children are rebellious and without Christ. They get road rage when driving to church and are rude to the waitress at lunch after church.
They are usually the ones that the non-believer won't come to your church because they know them and say something like 'if that is what it is to be a Christian I don't want any part of it.'

So what is the point to all this rambling?

Church, we got to get with it. We got to not only know what it is to be a Christian, but why those thing make Christianity different than other religions and spiritualities. We need to know the Bible and the doctrines that make Christianity what it is. We need to know them well enough to have confidence in them during our trials and be able to explain them to others when they have trials.

At the same time we got to walk the walk. The world, our children, families, and co-workers see Christianity and Jesus through us. When they picture a Christian in their mind they see us. Their idea of God comes from us. I think sometimes we are doing more harm for the cause of Christ than good.